The present invention relates generally to agricultural machinery and, more particularly, to improvements to balers for harvested crops.
Round balers or baling presses have a chassis; a baling or pressing chamber which is defined laterally by stationary walls and peripherally, in part, by cylindrical rollers or by endless rotating belts entrained over rotating mounted guide rollers; pick up and feed devices for feeding harvested crop to the baling chamber; and a storage device for storing a roll of net wrapping material for binding the bales. Typically the net is guided into the baling chamber between two feed rollers.
An example of such a baling press is described in DE 3 327 042. As shown in FIG. 1, the device for storing the roll of net wrapping material is located at the front end of the round baling press. In practice, the tractor tires throw small stones and dirt particles into the netting storage device. This problem of small stones and dirt particles thrown into the netting storage device is also encountered, although perhaps to a lesser extent, in round baling presses, whose netting storage device is mounted at the rear. Small stones and dirt particles in the netting storage device may become entangled in the netting, and also may become caught in the feed rollers as the netting is fed into the pressing chamber. The feed rollers are made of with a soft foam rubber coating, or like material, providing the necessary grip to reliably pull the netting from the roll and feed it into the pressing chamber. Hard and sharp stones caught in the feed rollers may damage the foam rubber coating of the feed rollers. Larger stones and foreign bodies may cause damage by bending the feed rollers. It is also desirable to protect the roll of netting from any moisture, such as precipitation, which may adversely affect the coefficient of friction of the netting material.
A sheet metal cover for the netting storage device prohibits a free view of the roll of netting from the tractor. Furthermore, a sheet metal cover for the storage device would be heavy and make it difficult for the machine operator to open and close the storage device when inserting new rolls of netting. Gas pressure dampers could minimize these disadvantages, but would make the metal cover even more expensive.
An object of this invention is to provide a cover for a storage device for a roll of netting that is inexpensive to make and easy for the machine operator to handle.